TW Cable boosts top Internet speed to 100 Mbps

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Time Warner Cable Inc. is doubling the Internet speed of its fastest product and more than halving the price of its lowest-speed product to compete with its telecoms rivals AT&T and Verizon.

The nation's second-largest cable TV provider is doubling the download speed of its top-tier "Ultimate" service to 100 Megabits per second. The speed upgrade is being rolled out now to customers in Los Angeles and will come to New York City and Hawaii by the end of the year. The "Ultimate" tier costs $105 per month without promotional pricing.

The offer is slightly faster and more expensive than a 75 Mbps download plan from Verizon's FiOS, which costs $95 per month without a contract, but is less pricey than FiOS' 150 Mbps plan, which costs $135 a month.

On the bottom end, New York-based Time Warner Cable is doubling the download speed of its "Lite" product to 2 Mbps and dropping the price without promotions to $15 per month from $35 per month. The new "Lite" plan starts Nov. 4.

The speed is roughly comparable to AT&T's "Express" Internet plan, which comes with a download speed of 1.5 Mbps but costs $36 a month without promotions.

Cable companies have separate service areas from each other, but they compete for TV, Internet and phone customers with phone companies like AT&T and Verizon in certain areas.

The competition to provide the best high-speed Internet service is heating up as it becomes more important to each company's financial results.

In the quarter through June, Time Warner Cable's residential high-speed data revenue grew 12.5 percent to $1.4 billion, while residential video revenue fell 4.4 percent to $2.7 billion. It reports its September quarter results on Thursday.